


A Moment of Understanding

by Nevcolleil



Series: Moments Like These [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, One-sided Angus MacGyver/Murdoc (MacGyver TV 2016), Rape/Non-con Elements, Very Mild non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: It’s been hours. It’s been hours and hours since Mac stormed out of the interrogation room... Murdoc touched him for five minutes. His tongue felt Mac’s skin for a moment... And, hours later, Mac feels it still.





	A Moment of Understanding

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Whatever I Want (I Get)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12385908) by [katikat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikat/pseuds/katikat). 



> I'd been wanting for a while to write a MacDalton version/follow up to katikat's amazing fic, and she graciously allowed me to do so. Just so happens that the prompt I received, inspiring this series, sort of applies, so this is where I'm posting it.
> 
> I haven't listed this as Rape/Non-con, but put relevant tags on the fic because there is a bad-touch element to this fic. See the end notes for further explanation/spoilers if you're concerned by this. 
> 
> This fic references the events of katikat's fic, pulling dialogue directly from that (with minor changes to one set of Murdoc's lines to reflect the established Mac/Jack relationship in this.) You needn't read that fic to understand this one, but I would definitely recommend you read it anyhow! And make sure to let katikat know how wonderful it is when you do!

Mac _must_ be naive.

No matter how he’d steeled himself to face Murdoc’s particular brand of crazy, up close and personal once again, the man had surprised him. Unsettled him. 

Mac’s tired of feeling unsettled by a man he should be able to anticipate by now to be unsettling.

‘ _Five minutes... Five minutes with_ you _. Without the handcuffs. And you’ll let me do whatever I want..._ ’

Jesus.

At best, Mac had expected Murdoc to talk at him again, about his father, about them being “two sides of the same coin”, without the power to react. To get up and leave. That would have been bad enough - feeling that helpless, that trapped - which is what Mac had assumed Murdoc had wanted to make him feel.

At worst, Mac had expected Murdoc to hurt him. That’s why he’d thought to set down his conditions to Murdoc’s deal: he gives Murdoc his five minutes, Murdoc gives them information to help them get Riley and Bozer back from the Blue Dawn. If-

‘ _One, Jack stays in the room_ -’

‘ _Well, of course I’m staying!_ ’ Jack shouted.

‘ _And two, whatever you do... no permanent damage._ ’

Because surely Murdoc would know a variety of ways to make him feel pain without damaging him in a lasting way...

 _God_ , why had Mac not expected-

Murdoc had said it himself. That he didn’t want Jack to move or to speak - that he just wanted Mac to... To let him _touch_.

It’s been hours. It’s been hours and hours since Mac stormed out of the interrogation room... Murdoc touched him for five minutes. _Five minutes_. His tongue felt Mac’s skin for a moment. And, hours later, Mac feels it still. _His skin is crawling_. He’s washed his face til it feels dry and stiff and strange, not his own, and still his hands are shaking as he lifts the towel to dry himself off.

He doesn’t hear Jack behind him, not until Jack speaks to him, and he looks up from the towel to see Jack leaning against the doorframe, ankles and arms crossed, standing just inside the bathroom door. 

“Hey, Mac,” he says quietly. Carefully, Mac thinks. The way he spoke to Mac after he’d gotten the information they needed from Murdoc and found Mac where Mac had fled to tell him so. “You finally ready to admit that you ain’t ‘ _fine_ ’ and talk about this?”

Jack kept a careful distance then, too. Had Mac appreciated that, then? He had, but now-

Mac’s wrapping his arms around Jack’s waist, burying his face in the curve of Jack’s neck; pressing as close to Jack as he can get - as if, by pressing close enough, he can _crawl into_ Jack for a bit, and leave his own tainted skin behind... at least for one moment.

“Mac... Hey,” Jack says so softly that Mac realizes he’s surprised _him_. Like maybe he wondered, walking in here, if Mac would even accept his touch, much less seek it out, after all that.

Mac shudders. “I’m sorry, Jack.” _Fuck_. He’s _so_ sorry. Too late it became clear that Murdoc had chosen the one way to torture them both, in his five minutes, that wouldn’t give Jack enough of an excuse to break their deal and maybe cost them Riley and Bozer.

Mac endured Murdoc _sniffing_ him... running his nose through Mac’s hair, the brush of Murdoc’s breath against his temple, right where the man’s probably fantasized about pressing the barrel of a pistol. 

He sat still enough as Murdoc’s hands roamed his shoulders... his arms. Murdoc wrapped his hands around Mac’s throat and squeezed gently, briefly, as if just gauging the resistance of Mac’s flesh beneath his fingers - for reference in future daydreams.

But Murdoc might as well have had Jack under his hands at the same time. Jack had to _watch_ as Murdoc freely touched Mac - never knowing if at any moment the psycho would decide to make his ultimate move, during this rare vacation from the monotony of his prison cell, and just snap Mac’s neck, regardless of the genuine threat Jack had made to shoot Murdoc if he hurt Mac.

Jack had to watch as Murdoc gently bent Mac’s head forward and Mac let him.

Mac could picture Jack, standing behind and to the side of the spectacle, silently - but surely - _seething_. Probably worse than Mac’s ever seen Jack in a rage. He all but smashed Murdoc into the wall of the interrogation room after the five minutes were over. 

Jack had no doubt seen Mac’s eyes fly open, the look that must have been on Mac’s face as Mac finally realized what Murdoc had been asking for when he’d asked for this. He’d heard Mac’s breath hitch in horror and the smug pleasure in Murdoc’s voice as he’d taunted them both.

‘ _So obedient_ ,’ Murdoc practically cooed, ‘ _as I knew you would be. You’re a lucky man, Agent Dalton. I assume he’s just as... pliant for you, when you touch him, as he’s being for me._ ’

“ _Hey_ ,” Jack repeats, more firmly, tearing Mac back out of that moment, his waking nightmare of it. “We don’t apologize for doing our jobs. Remember?”

Those were Mac’s words to Jack after a touch-and-go mission, when Mac had woken in the hospital to Jack looking absolutely wrecked at his bedside, actual tears in his eyes. As hospital visits go, that one had been fairly short and simple - especially compared to Mac’s usual hospital trip. But that time Jack had been the one, technically, to necessitate Mac’s need of medical attention. He’d had to bring down a watertower with a sniper perched on top of it. It just so happened that Mac had been on top of that very same watertower. 

“I know but-”

“No buts. Murdoc made that deal. We didn’t have any other option but to take it,” Jack says - saying ‘ _we_ ’ like he hadn’t just as firmly warned Mac not to do it. Like he hadn’t known better than Mac how little Mac would actually be able to handle what saying ‘yes’ to Murdoc might entail. 

Mac could almost laugh, but he’s not sure what the sound might turn into if he let himself, so he doesn’t.

“I couldn’t-” Mac begins to confess - before he even knows what he himself is confessing. The words just work their own way out of him. “I didn’t feel like I could breathe-”

His weakness? Is that what Mac’s finding so hard to shake about the experience?

Intellectually, he knows that nothing he did - or didn’t do - proves himself to be _weak_. That anyone would feel panic in the position that Mac was in. Regardless of the lack of physical restraints on his person. 

Anyone would feel... feel like _less_ , somehow, with someone who’d vowed to do anything in his power to make Mac _suffer_ massaging the knot of muscle beneath the nape of Mac’s neck, in a parody of a lover providing a comforting touch. Saying how _delicious_ Mac smells - how he wondered if Mac would taste just as good...

Shame? Did Mac feel shame, having opened himself up to that? _Does_ he feel ashamed? Or is the deep-seated _hollowness_ in Mac’s gut just simple violation, residual revulsion at Murdoc’s sick mindfucking?

Oh, Mac should not have labeled what’s happened to him with that term, even in the privacy of his own thoughts.

He shudders violently in Jack’s arms, which wrap around him even tighter. Jack presses his nose into the side of Mac’s face.

Murdoc has _licked_ this face - nearly from chin to temple. He stopped to dip into the corner of Mac’s mouth and smacked his lips when he was done like he was savoring the flavor of-

“It’s over,” Jack says, groundingly. Urgently. Like he can see Mac’s thoughts beginning to spiral again, from outside of Mac’s head.

He probably can. No one knows Mac as well as Jack does. Murdoc could _never_ know Mac as well as Jack does - not if they gave him five days instead of five hours. No matter what he did... no matter what he could have done-

(He could have touched Mac _anywhere_. And even if Mac had pushed him away immediately after, or Jack had removed him - even if they’d broken the deal, the deed would have been done. ' _I want to get to know you better_ ,’ Murdoc had told Mac, but that had only been half of his goal, hadn’t it? He’d wanted Mac to know _him_ , as well. To know the feel of his touch. To remember it-)

“You don’t ever need to come anywhere near that freak again, I promise,” Jack repeats the words he spoke for Mac right after it happened. “He’s back in prison, and we’re safe as houses. You don’t ever have to see or talk to that sick bastard ever again.”

Mac lets Jack’s words, Jack’s voice... _Jack’s_ touch be the ones filling Mac’s mind. He asks about Riley and Bozer, who Jack has just returned from rescuing (Mac should have been there, shouldn’t have let Matty send him home, even if Jack and his tac team did have everything under control, if for nothing but to be there for them when Riley and Bozer were brought back-)

“It’s okay, Mac,” Jack promises him also, again seeming to read Mac’s mind - or maybe his body language, their bodies never separating until Jack manages to coax Mac out of the bathroom and to their bed. “They’re still a little out of it. Told them to go straight to bed. The Blue Dawn drugged ‘em and stashed ‘em. They didn’t get hurt, they’re just a lot shaken up. Like you are. There’s no shame in that, for any of you.”

Jack even manages to make Mac feel as much, once they’re tucked in and pressed close once more - this time with less clothing - lips thorough but undemanding, dropping light kisses all over Mac’s face, down his neck. No request for or insinuation of anything more - just the genuine gift of _real_ comfort.

Two months later, Jack repeats the gesture, when Mac lies there in bed with him, needing the security of Jack’s arms around him to not shake out of his skin. Sleep an absolute impossibility.

Murdoc’s escaped, and his last words to Mac, that day in the interrogation room, echo again and again through Mac’s brain.

“ _You_ do _taste as good as I thought, Macgyver_ ,” he shouted with glee. “ _I’ll remember. Next time we meet... I’ll remember!_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings/Spoilers: This fic does contain elements of Non-con. Mac allows Murdoc five minutes to touch him however he'd like, in exchange for information. Murdoc touches Mac above his shoulders and licks the side of Mac's face while being generally creepy and fiendish.


End file.
